Sandwiches, hot sauces, all in a day’s work

A popular local food truck operator has been making a splash with his creative hot sauces. Creativity has always been part of the recipe for Chef Matt Shaughnessy. The culinary force behind Birdhouse Sandwich Co. grew up in a restaurant family and was exposed to a variety of cooking formats from an early age. His signature Asian-Mexican fusion style was honed during his time working with a Korean chef years ago who blended Mexican cuisine into his traditional cooking.

Traveling also exposed him to many different cuisines and helped shape his personal direction as a chef. That interest spilled over into sauce making. “I have always been a sauce hound,” Shaughnessy said. “We did a lot of world travel, which sparked a large portion of my fusion cooking. It was also how I developed my palate for eclectic flavors in sauces.”

He said his desire to more fully develop his own line of hot sauces “really took off” when his cousin in Minnesota started growing peppers and sending him samples in a mash of peppers, vinegar, and garlic, blended and pressure-cooked. “We were calling it Crazy Cousin Brian’s hot sauce at the time,” Shaughnessy said.

Due to the extreme heat of the mixes, Shaughnessy began doctoring them with different fruits, seasonings, and more vinegars.

“It took off from there,” he said, “and Birdhouse Originals Hot Sauce was born.”

His first batch was Hatch Berry, a blend of fire-roasted New Mexico hatch chilis counterbalanced by strawberries, smoked garlic, and two types of vinegar. Honey, kosher salt, and other seasonings round out the ingredients. From there, the real fun began. With out-of-state friends supplying him with often exotic forms of peppers, Shaughnessy was able to experiment with different blends of ingredients.

That experimentation begins with a taste test, both raw and cooked, to help determine what fruits and seasonings might pair best with the pepper. From there, he said he researches the origin of the pepper and some simple recipes that growers have used them in. Then he adds his personal touch.

“My fusion cooking style is very much alive in my sauce venture. I like looking into world cuisines to see how they work with certain peppers,” he said. “I am all about the complexity of flavor and utilizing the pepper in that fashion, not just for heat’s sake.”

The Sugar Rush Peach pepper is one example of an exotic pepper variety used by Shaughnessy. The long, peach-colored chili that is packed with super sweet tropical flavor, and seeds that add a smoky complex heat, is blended with bananas to create Birdhouse’s Sugar Rush Banana Blackout sauce.

Similarly, Shaughnessy uses Tangerine Tiger peppers, a colorful variety with mild to medium heat and a fruity, sweet flavor, in his Citrus Assassin sauce. That one adds Red Reaper peppers to the mix, along with mandarin oranges, lime juice, onion, garlic and ginger, all combined with honey and vinegar.

“I create the recipes the same way I do with my specials. I obsess over them in my head,” he said. “I dream up different fruit and seasoning combinations and write recipes until I think I have a solid base.”

All of Shaughnessy’s sauces are available at his food trailer, which is parked in the Palmer Towne Food Court, 127 S. Alaska St., and open three or four days each week. Customers can use the sauces on any of the menu items at Birdhouse, and they’re also available for sale in 4-ounce squeeze bottles.

Justin Harrison is among the growing legion of Birdhouse Sandwich Co. fans. The 21-year-old lifetime Palmer resident sampled his first hot sauce last year, a trial blend Shaughnessy had been working to perfect.

“It was phenomenal,” Harrison said. “It was sweet, with a tang, and punched up with heat. But the heat didn’t mute the flavor tones and seasonings.”

He said the Pineapple Upside Down Lemon Starrburst is his favorite of the sauces. It’s made with pineapple and the Khang Starr Lemon Starrburst pepper, a bright yellow chili from the Scotch Bonnet family that has fruity flavor and some heat on the palate. Shaughnessy adds brown sugar, ginger, onion, and smoked garlic to the mix, along with some vinegar, lemon juice, and honey. “It’s so good,” Harrison said. “I’ve had that Pineapple Upside Down on everything.”

A regular at Birdhouse Sandwich Co. since 2019, Harrison said the OG Clucker sub is his favorite menu item. Made with house-smoked chicken, sliced cheddar, lettuce, tomato, onion, and creole mayonnaise and served on a hoagie roll made by Europa bakery in Anchorage, the Clucker is one of the more popular offerings at the food trailer. “What keeps me coming back is how homemade everything is,” Harrison said.

That’s all part of the plan for Shaughnessy, who considers his role as a creative chef to be similar to artistry.

“The fun part about cooking is that you can change the flavor very easily with fruits and veggies and other seasonings,” he said. “It’s like an oil painting that has so many complex layers. If you mess up, you just add more.” Shaughnessy said that’s especially true when putting a new hot sauce together.

“They’re a bit of a mind game because you have to know how something will taste after settling for a few months,” he said. “That’s when the magic happens and all the flavors come together.”

He said his intention when he started with sauces, which he makes in small 1.5- to 2-gallon batches, was to never repeat one. But “crowd pleasers” emerged, along with steady demand for shipped sauces, that led him to make second and third batches.

“I always save one bottle of each sauce for myself in case I make another batch,” he said. “I'll do it by taste because I have the ingredients but not the measurements.”

Meanwhile, development of new flavor combinations for hot sauces is always an ongoing process.

“I have a few new combos up my sleeve,” he said.

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